Indigenous Spirituality, Health, and Well-Being in the Young: Yarns With the Victorian Aboriginal Community.

The extant literature has scant detail about everyday spiritual practices that aid Indigenous young people. This paper systematically explores Indigenous Spirituality, health, and well-being through Elder-governed conducted via Zoom with 44 Aboriginal Elders, Healers, and Senior and Junior people involved in health and well-being of the Victorian Aboriginal community. These were analyzed through an innovative, constructivist, multi-perspectival discursive grounded theory method.

Country and community vs poverty and conflict: Teasing apart the key demographic and psychosocial resilience and risk factors for Indigenous clinic-referred children and adolescents.

Objective: Indigenous young people are known to have adverse demographic and psychosocial factors affecting worse mental health outcomes and some household factors aiding resilience. In Australia, there has been no exploration of these factors in clinically referred Indigenous young people assessed in a culturally appropriate way.

Methods: A total of 113 Indigenous children and adolescents, 217 non-Indigenous young people, age, gender, mental disorder symptom severity, symptom-linked distress and impairment matched, and 112 typically developing participants, age- and gender-matched were recruited.

Key demographic and mental disorder diagnostic differences between Australian First Nations and non-First Nations clinic-referred children and adolescents assessed in a culturally appropriate and safe way.

Objective: Increased point prevalence rates of oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder have been reported in American Indian and Canadian First Nations children and adolescents. To date, in Australia, there has been no published examination of standardized mental disorder diagnoses in First Nations children and adolescents, determined after addressing key cultural methodological issues.

Methods: In all, 113 First Nations children and adolescents and 217 non-First Nations young people, aged 6-16  years, age, gender, mental disorder symptom severity, symptom-linked distress and impairment matched were recruited in a case control study.

Gender Variance in Children and Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental and Psychiatric Conditions from Australia.

Gender variance is a broad term used to describe gender non-conforming behaviors. Past studies have used the parental response to Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Item 110, which asks whether a child "Wishes to be of opposite sex" as an indicator of gender variance. The population prevalence of gender variance in children and adolescents using this metric was found to be 1.

Spatial working memory performance in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder and dysthymic disorder.

Background: Spatial working memory (SWM) is known to be impaired in children with Major depressive disorder (MDD), and, separately, Dysthymic disorder (DD) (DSM V persistent depressive disorder equivalent). Yet, it remains unclear whether MDD or DD is associated with worse SWM impairment, whether DD adds to the SWM impairments evident in MDD and whether these findings are evident in children as well as adolescents with MDD and DD.

Methods: The association of SWM and its strategy and spatial span components is explored in carefully defined children and adolescents (age 6-16 years) with MDD alone (N = 29), MDD and DD (N = 130), DD alone (N = 154) compared to healthy typically developing participants (N = 107), controlling for age, gender, full scale IQ and social adversity status.

Parent- and child-reported anxiety disorders differentiating major depressive disorder and dysthymic disorder in children and adolescents.

Objective: To date, specific parent- and child-defined anxiety disorders associated with dysthymic disorder (DD; DSM-5 persistent depressive disorder equivalent) with and without major depressive disorder (MDD) have not been investigated in children and adolescents.

Method: In a cross-sectional study, we compared point prevalence rates of parent- and child-reported anxiety disorders in DD alone ( = 154), MDD alone ( = 29), comorbid DD and MDD ( = 130) and anxiety disorders alone ( = 126) groups.

Results: DD alone and MDD alone did not differ with respect to comorbid anxiety disorders from parent and child reports, while parent-reported panic disorder (PD) was significantly increased in the DD and MDD group compared to the other three groups as was child-reported post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to the MDD alone and anxiety disorders alone groups.

Irritability, Depressed Mood, Inattention and Spatial Working Memory in Children and Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder With/Without Persistent Depressive Disorder.

The specific relationships between sad/low mood, irritability, inattention and spatial working memory (SWM) have not been systematically examined in young people with major depressive disorder with and without persistent depressive disorder. 313 medication naïve young people (aged 6-16 years) with active major depressive disorder (MDD) alone, persistent depressive disorder (DD) alone and comorbid active MDD and DD were identified. Standard multiple regression was used to investigate how well SWM components-Spatial Span, Strategy and Between Search Errors (BSE)-predict 'sad/unhappy', 'irritable' mood and 'Inattention'.

Mental health care for Indigenous young people: moving culture from the margins to the centre.

Objective: Recently, Indigenous academics have evolved an Indigenist discourse that centralises Indigenous 'ways of knowing, being and doing'. Through this dialogue, Indigenous 'ways of knowing and being' augment Western biopsychosocial treatments.

Methods: This paper outlines the authors' clinical encounters with young people from the Koori community and ongoing consultation with Koori community Elders in Victoria that led to engaging young people and their families in an Indigenist dialogue.

Latent profile analysis of working memory performance in a sample of children with ADHD.

The current study used latent profile analysis (LPA) to ascertain distinct groups of children with ADHD (N = 701) in terms of performance on working memory (WM) tasks that tapped visuospatial sketchpad, spatial central executive, and verbal central executive functions. It compared the WM performances of these classes with a clinical comparison group (N = 59). The participants' age ranged from 7 to 16 years (586 males, 71 females).

A pilot study of a school-based prevention and early intervention program to reduce oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder.

Unlabelled: Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) or conduct disorder (CD) occurs when children's disruptive and antisocial behaviours start to interfere with their academic, emotional and/or social development. Recently, there has been a considerable investment to implement national school-based early intervention programs to help prevent the onset of ODD/CD.

Aim: This paper describes the delivery of the Royal Children's Hospital, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service and Schools Early Action Program: a whole school, multi-level, multidisciplinary approach to address emerging ODD/CD and pre- versus post-delivery assessment in 40 schools over a 4-year period (2007-2010).

Examination of spatial working memory performance in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, combined type (ADHD-CT) and anxiety.

Spatial working memory (SWM) is known to be impaired in children with ADHD-CT, whether anxiety is present or not. Yet, it remains unclear whether anxiety disorders add to the SWM impairments evident in ADHD-CT and whether these findings extend into adolescents with ADHD-CT and anxiety. Further, it is not yet known whether children and adolescents with carefully defined anxiety disorders alone, demonstrate SWM deficits.

Management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: the importance of psychosocial and medication treatments.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessment and treatment in children and adolescents is complex. Key biological and psychosocial risk factors need to be identified and treated because of their potential mediating interaction that affect the onset, progression, and psychosocial and medication treatment response of core ADHD symptoms and common associated co-morbid conditions. Both psychosocial and medication treatments, alone and in combination, have been shown to reduce the core ADHD symptoms and those of its key co-morbid disorders.